


Blue Monday

by a_lanart



Series: Torchwood 4: Lost and Found [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover. Torchwood 4, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2009-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:19:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_lanart/pseuds/a_lanart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Torchwood 4 went missing - this is the story that tells how that happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Monday

Author: A Lanart  
Title: Blue Monday  
Fandom: Torchwood  
Characters: Mostly OCs, mention of Captain Jack  
Rating: PG-13 for swearing  
Warnings/Spoilers: None  
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to Aunty Beeb.  
Title from the song of the same name by New Order

 

The Players:

Mitchell 'Mitch' Anderson – Torchwood 4 weapons specialist  
Rosario 'Rosa' Phillipe – Torchwood 4 engineer  
Jason 'Jase' Iliades – Torchwood 4 'tech' geek and resident computer person.  
Calista 'Cally' MacIan – Torchwood 4 medic  
Andrew and Lorna Tierney – Torchwood 4 communications and language experts. Lorna is also the archivist

Location: Torchwood 4, deep underground near Dudley in the Midlands on Monday 23rd September 2002.

~*~

Blue Monday

*

"Mitch, just what the fuck are you doing? How the hell am I supposed to even attempt reverse engineering of an artefact without cocking everything up when you're playing with your big boy's toys? I *thought* you were supposed to be having an office day." Rosario Phillipe went storming into the weapons testing area in full flood, only to find the place deserted. The disconcerting rumbling that had drawn her there continued. "Oh," she said to no-one in particular. "I'm not sure I like this." Like was understatement; the rumbling didn't feel like an earthquake – she'd felt enough of those in her travels to visit her grandmother in Venezuela – and the alternatives that ran through her head were all ten times worse. Maybe Mitch, or one of the others, had managed to find an explanation. She firmly clung to that hope as she made her way to the admin and ops centre.

*

Mitchell Anderson was de facto leader of Torchwood Four. He wasn't terribly happy about it but as the senior member of the team he'd had to take over when the previous leader had resigned and dosed herself with retcon before anyone could ask the pertinent reasons behind *why* she'd resigned. Helpfully, she'd left him with the security codes and a brief message that said "I've had enough. Don't try to contact me as I won't know who you are." Mitch supposed he should be more surprised that she hadn't done it sooner; at 51 Suzanne Pankhurst 'no relation, thank you' had been the oldest member of any branch of Torchwood, including mad Archie in Scotland, unless you took the rumours of Jack bloody Harkness in Torchwood Three living forever to be true. None of the other Torchwood branches had been any help whatsoever, they were apparently all in the process of rebuilding themselves, except for Archie and Torchwood Two but Mitch had been relieved when Archie *hadn't* offered to help; some things were best never disturbed and Archie was disturbing enough as it was.

Mitch had his own ideas about leadership, or more accurately what it *wasn't*, and he didn't think he was the ideal person for the job. Out of the current Torchwood Four team there weren't really any of them that were ideal for the job; Rosario their engineer was too... volatile... for want of a better word, Calista their medic if anything was too easy going and Jase the tech guy was not a people person to say the least. When Jase was involved, anything more complicated than ordering coffee was likely to become an international, if not intergalactic, conflict. Then of course there were the twins, Andrew and Lorna, who were amazing with languages both alien and terrestrial, completely unflappable and hopelessly incapable of deception; good for him, but not so good in a Torchwood head honcho. Still, they were a team and if they seemed to lead by committee more often than not then that was fine by him. Of course when the shit hit the fan he found the leadership hat shoved firmly on his head whether he wanted it or not. Like it had been today when the unexplained tremors started.

"No, I don't have any idea what it is, Rosa," Mitch said as his engineer slid into the seat next to him, not giving her the chance to open her mouth. "But I'm hoping Jase is going to work a bit of techno-wizardy and enable us to find out. The only thing I *do* know is that it isn't anything from in here that's causing the problem."

"It's not going to be anything good, you know," she commented.

"Of course it's not going to be anything good; this is Torchwood Four, not bloody Utopia."

"Arse-end of fucking nowhere."

"Exactly."

"Glad it wasn't your fault though."

"Oh don't tell me you went down to the range to harangue me?" Mitch was glad to see that Rosario had the grace to blush, an interesting effect on her given the freckles and her colouring. He hid a smile, she was so predictable sometimes. Anything she might have said in reply was interrupted by frantic beeping and a triumphant 'Yes!' from under the main desk, closely followed by Jase emerging on hands and knees before he straightened up on his knees to tap at a ridiculous speed on his keyboard. He was muttering as he typed, but it was incomprehensible to Mitch, until he grinned and said,

"Gotcha."

"Got what?" Rosario asked, mercifully without yelling.

"We have external monitoring." The tapping on the keyboard continued.

"We've always had external monitoring..." she sounded puzzled, and Mitch took pity on her.

"Not down there, we haven't," he said, pointing at the floor. "We know whatever is causing this," his words were punctuated by another rumble, "is not internal. It's also not an earthquake according to the BGS*, they aren't detecting anything of the sort around here at the moment. Just to be on the safe side, Lorna and Andrew have been checking the external seals. We're not in lockdown yet, but we're pretty much prepared to be isolated at the flick of a switch."

"Is that really necessary?"

"I hope not. It all depends on what Jase's babies show us." Mitch turned his attention to the tech, who had got round to scrambling off his knees and was now perched on the edge of his chair, still furiously typing. "Got anything yet?"

"Almost there. Just trying to clear up reception a bit. Shouldn't take long now until... Jesus, Mary and fucking Joseph! What the hell is that!!!?" Jase spun the monitor round so Mitch could see the somewhat grainy, but still adequate picture. Mitch did a double take, and blinked. It didn't improve the unreality of what he was watching on the screen.

"It's a slug," he said. It wasn't like any slug he'd ever seen, it looked like it was bigger than him for a start and he wasn't a small man and it was dissolving the rock around itself. In fact it looked like it was working its way through their walls, their previously 20 foot thick walls which obviously weren't any longer. He glanced at the locator that Jase had brought up on the screen and a chill ran through him. "Isn't that where the perception filter generator is?"

"Yes." Jase sounded almost cheerful; Mitch could have equally as cheerfully strangled him.

"Shit. Where are Andrew and Lorna?" He'd no sooner asked the question than a clatter of footsteps announced their arrival. Mitch breathed a sigh of relief; his team were all as safe as they could be. "Now apart from blowing the damn thing up, do you lot have any bright ideas what to do with it before it breaches our walls?" He was met by a strained silence which surprisingly made him feel almost happy. For once in his life, they weren't going to moan about him experimenting with explosives. "Right then, looks like a job for me, doesn't it? In the meantime, if you find out what this thing actually *is*, keep me posted, and be prepared for immediate lockdown."

*

Rosario watched Mitch leave with a sigh; she hoped he'd be OK. Hell, she hoped they all would be OK. Giant wall-eating slugs were not the usual fare for Torchwood Four; they were more about admin, research and experimentation than anything else. The really messy stuff was left to Three in Cardiff, unless it was dead, and only then did Calista get to play with it too.

"I suppose we'd better get to it then." She tapped her headset. "Cally, did you get all of that?"

"Aye, I did. I've nothing more to suggest either. Do you think he'll leave me any big pieces to dissect?"

"Cally!" The connection was cut amid the sound of giggles, from both Calista in the lab, and from the direction of the twins at their console. Jase was still glaring morosely at his screen. Rosario sighed again; she had a bad feeling about this, a *very* bad feeling.

That feeling wasn't helped when she, like the others, came to the conclusion that the slug-thing did not appear to be a mutation of anything remotely earth-like. Jase had managed to get more sensors in place and was first to realise what they were showing.

"That *thing* is covered in chronon particles. This is not good," he announced. Rosario left her console to stand beside him.

"Artron energy?" She asked. Jase nodded.

"That too. Also not good."

"Understatement of the fucking year, Jase. We have a time-travelling space slug eating its way into our base and all you can say is that it's 'not good'."

"What did you expect me to say? Screeching about it won't change anything."

"Screeching? SCREECHING?" She took a breath to say something else and heard an apologetic sounding cough from other side of the room. She whirled to face that direction. "What?" She barked. As usual Lorna didn't even flinch and answered with perfect equanimity.

"I think we've found something in the archives that may help. An explosive that seems to have a temporal effect too, seems to have been a development of something called nitro-nine. Goodness knows why it ended up here and not in One." Rosario met the half smile on Lorna's face with a raised eyebrow.

"You've worked with Mitch and you're seriously wondering about that?"

"You have a point. Hopefully using this stuff will send that damn slug *back* to where it came from as well as getting rid of it from here."

"And we'll be safe from any temporal disturbances?" That was Rosario's main concern; she didn't like the idea of messing around with time. Ordinary human beings weren't supposed to and usually did with dire consequences. She only had to look as far as the Torchwood Charter for proof of that, never mind anywhere else. Lorna shrugged, not exactly the most reassuring of gestures in the circumstances

"I don't see why not; the core of this place has temporal shielding." Lorna paused, and glanced away. Rosario frowned; in Jase's parlance that was Not Good and only ever meant that there was something Lorna would prefer not to mention. The girl was transparent as water.

"What aren't you telling me, Lorna?" She asked.

"It just so happens that the room the slug is trying to get into is outside the shields."

Rosario couldn't help but groan in response; she'd known it sounded too good to be true. Nothing was ever like that, not in the outside world, and definitely not in Torchwood.

"The perception filter generator is *outside* the temporal shielding? Whose bright idea was that? That goes and we lose our camouflage from the outside world." Rosario was on the verge of yelling again when she was stopped by the implacable Lorna raising her hands in mock surrender. There was a spine of steel hidden behind the petite and unassuming exterior as Rosario had found out on more than one occasion.

"Hey, hey, hey, don't shoot the messenger. It was nothing to do with either me or Andrew." Rosario noticed the quick glance that Lorna cast behind her "Or Jase, for that matter."

"Probably another incomprehensible decision by our erstwhile leader. And of course she's well out of it. Bitch," she grumbled. It was a well worn complaint; Rosario did not have a good opinion of Ms Pankhurst's method of departure. None of them did, the others just hid it better than she was able to. Lorna met her eyes with a sigh of her own.

"We'll deal; we always do," she said. "I'll let Mitch know then, shall I?"

"Please," Rosario replied gratefully. She slowly turned catching everyone's eyes, including Calista who was standing by the door. Rosario had no idea how long she'd been there but smiled anyway. "I could murder a coffee, anyone else want one?"

*

Mitch glanced at the innocuous looking canisters in his hands. If Lorna was right, these babies could be the answer to their little vermin problem. He sincerely hoped they were, as the wall looked suspiciously transparent. He just wished that there'd been time to close down the perception filter generator and move it inside those oh so convenient temporal shields. As it was he was barely going to have enough time to get *himself* behind the blast doors and into the shielded area. The first drop of slime oozed through the wall, hissing ominously as it came into contact with the Torchwood atmosphere. The scientist in him carefully noted that the rock didn't actually seem to be dissolving, more like vanishing into thin air as if it was being pushed into another phase of reality. If the space-time slug's *slime* could do that, Mitch certainly didn't want to be around to meet the big bad itself. Mentally crossing his fingers he turned the dials on the canisters, hoping that Lorna had been right. Without further ado he left them; one as close to the wall as he could get without coming into contact with the increasingly large pool of slime, the other by the perception filter generator. It was a calculated risk, but Mitch really didn't want either that slime, or the slug, to come into contact with the machine. They would just have to do without one in the future as he didn't think they'd have much success in convincing UNIT to let them have any more of the artefacts that were an essential component of the perception filter generator. The actual rebuilding of the machine wouldn't have been a problem; in combination the team were almost frighteningly intelligent and innovative, but without those components, there could be no perception filter. Mitch looked back over his shoulder as he jogged down the corridor; the hole in the wall was widening and would soon be slug sized. He increased his pace as he wanted to be as far away from the doors and as close to the rest of the team as possible when those canisters went up.

He almost made it back to the team. He was close enough to see them in a huddle round Jase's terminal, nervously clutching at each other as they waited for the explosion. He intended to ask them if they had room for one more, but got no further than a soundless gasp of breath before the first canister blew. There was a heavily muffled boom and a sickening lurch that made Mitch feel like they were falling out of the bottom of reality. He staggered across the floor in an effort to reach the others, no longer sure which way was up. Then the second canister went, and with it the perception filter generator, and their life as they knew it.

As the dust settled and after some frantic scrabbling which assured Mitch that they were all alive and essentially in one piece, he crawled over to Jase.

"Visuals?" He croaked. He needed to know if the explosion had completely removed the space-time slug. Mitch hovered over Jase after he accepted the offer of a hand up and scrambled back to his console, righting all the equipment. Amazingly it was all still working. Mitch breathed a sigh of relief; they just might have come through this intact. Might. He gave Andrew and the girls a shaky smile as he watched Jase's fingers fly over the keyboard. The smile fell when he heard Jase mutter,

"No, that can't be right." There was more typing, the familiar sound of Jase's fingers on the keys almost desperate in the thick air. An image wavered onto the screen, another, a third, a fourth; all confirming the same thing. Where Dudley should be was a network of coruscating light unlike anything Mitch had seen before in his life. The only good thing was that there was no sign of the space-time slug either. He stepped back from the screen to allow the rest of the team to see for themselves. There was a collective gasp of breath as they realised what the pictures on the screen meant, and they all turned to back toward Mitch. He gave them all a sickly smile.

"I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

 

~*~

I know you have no idea what any of these OCs look like as there isn't a single description in the fic. If it helps I do know the following.  
Rosario Phillipe is of Venezuelan, Filipino and Irish extraction  
Jason Iliades is half Greek  
Lorna and Andrew Tierney are blonde  
Calista MacIan is a Scottish redhead  
Mitch is kind of nondescript (only because I don't know what he looks like yet), but has dreads

BGS* British Geological Survey

I have mucked around with the timing of the 2002 Dudley earthquake somewhat, it actually happened at approx 1 am on Monday 23rd September, for the sake of the fic lets say it was actually 1pm.

You can read more about the earthquake on the BBC site. Interestingly the earthquake was upgraded from a 4.8 magnitude quake to a 5.0 magnitude quake a day or so later; a pretty big earthquake by British standards  
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2275158.stm


End file.
